Auburn City Council members recently approved the City’s Transportation Improvement Program, recognizing about $146 million worth of transportation improvements over the next six years.
Auburn’s 2010 – 2015 TIP lists more than 50 projects, including non motorized and pavement preservation. It includes three projects of regional significance as follows:
• City wide Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), Phase 2, including interconnecting and coordinating traffic signals in the city. This project calls for traffic management cameras, fiber optic interconnect and related hardware along the Auburn Way North and South 277th Street corridors. It will be completed in 2009. The total project cost will be $1.4 million.
• M Street grade separation, calling for construction of a grade-separated railroad crossing of M Street Southeast at the Burlington Northern Stampede Pass tracks. The total project cost will be $22.1 million. Construction is expected to start in 2011.
• South 277th Street widening, includes the addition of three lanes, one westbound and two eastbound plus. The project length is nine-tenths of a mile. The total project cost is $3 million. No construction dates given.
Along with the Comprehensive Transportation Plan, the TIP serves as a source document for the capital facilities plan and is required by the state Growth Management Act. Its adoption must be preceded by a public hearing.
The state requires that the first three years of the TIP be fully funded, so the City has to know where all the sources of income, including state and federal grants, are for a given project. Projects must be included in the TIP to be eligible for the state and federal grants.
“The TIP is a way to say, ‘Here are all the future needs of the city in this period of time, here’s what we still have to do, but we don’t have the money yet,’ “ said Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis. “The bigger the project, the more funding sources we are going to have.”
The upshot for planners is that given the expected seven-year life span of a freight corridor, as soon as the city resurfaces a freight corridor, it has to put it back in the TIP. This also applies to sidewalk planning, storm drains and more.
When the City begins work on the M Street underpass, for instance, there will be funds that can only be used in the planning, funds that can only be used only in site acquisition and funds that can only be used for the pumps underneath it.
“The TIP is that living document that changes every year and adds the new transportation projects into the future,” Lewis said.
